Anthony Mason's "Fine Print" series on CBS SUNDAY MORNING
profiled the elusive K.C. Constantine this morning --
probably the finest installment in the series. Constantine
was filmed in shadow or with his face otherwise obscured, but
he allowed Mason to uncover (and confirm) about everything.
Yes, he was a minor league baseball player in the Orioles
organization. Yes, he was a Marine. Yes, he took his nom de
plume from his Russian father's first name. He is of Russian
origin, was an altar boy in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Lives in Pennsylvania. Writes in his basement. Two pictures
of him were shown: one a photo of him in an Orioles uniform,
one a portrait painted of him at 13 by his father, who was a
house painter by profession. (He painted the Orthodox Church
in Constantine's hometown, across the river from Pittsburgh.)
Still lives in Pennsylvania. Constantine named a lot of
names: Greenburg, PA is the model of Rocksburg, PA, for
instance. Constantine has made his living as a teacher and as
a copyeditor. He gave the reasons we've all heard about why
he tries to keep so secretive about his true identity:
mostly, people treat you differently when they know you're a
writer and then you can't learn their real stories (a very
rough paraphrase). The most interesting part of the profile
concerned the influence of Eric Hoffer on him. Constantine,
after the Marines, took an English class in which he failed
an assignment, with the instructor saying something like he
could never learn how to write. Then Constantine saw a
profile of Hoffer on CBS and learned about how he was a
self-taught writer. Constantine bought Hoffer's THE TRUE
BELIEVER and started literally copying the paragraphs in the
book to learn how punctuation works, how tense works, etc. He
literally learned the basics of writing/grammar as an adult,
from copying Hoffer's stuff word for word. Fascinating stuff.
The worst part of the profile: I'm not sure how familiar
Mason was with Constantine's work. The casual viewer would
come away from the profile without much understanding of the
importance of Constantine's series. But, all in all, it was a
terrific piece. I'd like to give you a link to the CBS SUNDAY
MORNING webpage, where you could get more information about
he profile, but CBS apparently decided to post nothing about
it. Too bad.
Later...Kip
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